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Packard deed issued to Peru developer after final payment is made

Photo by Gary Anglebrandt
A developer from Peru has the deed to the Packard plant.

The deed for the Packard plant on Detroit's east side has been issued to a developer from Peru after he finalized a $405,000 payment to Wayne County.

Fernando Palazuelo made the final payment to Wayne County on Tuesday for the 3.5 million-square-foot abandoned plant between Interstate 94 and East Grand Boulevard on Detroit's east side, chief deputy treasurer David Szymanski wrote in an email Thursday.

"While the sale of the Packard plant is now completed, success will be measured over the course of the next several months and years as Mr. Fernando Palazuelo pools his resources and addresses the redevelopment of this iconic structure," county Treasurer Ray Wojtowicz said in an emailed statement. "I'm hopeful the years of neglect of this plant are now slipping into our rearview mirror."

Long the target of graffiti taggers, arsonists, scrappers and vandals, the plant is planned for a mixed-use redevelopment.

Palazuelo was the third-highest bidder in an October property tax foreclosure auction. After a suburban Dallas family physician, Jill Van Horn, failed to pay her winning bid of $6.038 million, the county then offered the property to a Chicago-area developer, Bill Hults, for his runner-up bid of $2 million.

Hults made $200,000 in nonrefundable deposits on the plant, but then failed to pay the remaining $1.8 million he owed to the county. He had planned a $750 million to $850 million mixed-use development.

The property, abandoned for decades, was then offered to Palazuelo, the third-highest bidder in the auction, for $405,000. He made a 10-percent nonrefundable deposit on the Packard Plant in November.